The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has alerted residents on the proliferation of illegal housing estates and other developments along Idu Train Station, Apo Tapi and Lugbe axis within the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC).
To this end, the FCTA through the Department of Development Control (DDC) has already served all relevant notices and has marked the structures, which at the appropriate time, its officials would demolish.
Making this disclosure during a press briefing Friday, the Director of Development Control, Alhaji Mukhtar Galadima, said the information became necessary due to the increasing number of advertisements on the social and conventional media by land grabbers and illegal developers of housing estates, stressing that some of them are alien to the Development Control Department as they never approved such.
Galadima explained that some of those areas have not yet been detailed with design layout, but stated that some people are carrying fake title document claiming such estates were allocated by AMAC.
He added that it is against the development rules and regulations for somebody, while in the course of implementing his or her plan, to change already approved plan without recourse to approval for modification.
He said that with the putting in place of the FCT Urban and Planning Tribunal, land grabbing and other menace will be reduced, as there would be prosecution of defaulters.
He also revealed that developers of illegal structures and land grabbers will be made to pay for the cost of demolition and afterwards be handed over to Police for diligent prosecution.
According to him: “Our attention has been drawn to some areas of the city where people are developing without any title developments. And we want to educate the public and to inform them that some of these adverts are on illegal developments.
“As the department of Development Control in FCT, we found it expedient to adequately inform the citizens on the need to secure building plan and approval, to enable them develop inline with what is being approved.
“We know that in the course of implementing development proposals there are rooms for modifications, adjustments and the wisest thing to do is to resubmit the design and seek for approval before changing any aspect of the approved plan, failure to do so is an apparition of what was really approved for the developer.“But, I would like to reiterate that all illegal developments along the Idu Train Station, Apo Tapi and Lugbe Areas, where people are busy spending money, and unsuspecting Nigerians are subscribing to these housing estates, we are saying now these are illegal developments, and we have served all relevant notices, so at an appropriate time, we are going to remove them.”
